Governmental law vs. Grace

This is something that I have idly pondered before, thought fairly hard about this summer due to some events and some reading, and am fully wrestling with now due to circumstances I'm not going to post about here:

What exactly is the intersection between government legality/justice and grace? How do we as Christians legally respond when we are victimized?

We pray for God to help us "forgive us our debts/trespasses as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass against us." We are also told to submit to the ruling powers and authorities. So when we are victimized or witness a crime - what do we do?

We could go for justice and demand what is "rightfully ours", whether it be time, money, posessions, peace of mind, or revenge. Submit to the authorities, demand legal observance. Send them to jail or court, sue if we must. That sounds harsh, of course, but we do it every day, when we submit insurance claims or report a crime that we see.

Or we could turn the other cheek, let the perpetrator go. We do that too, but often out of fear of getting involved rather than out of charity and care.

So which do we strive for? If we don't turn in a theif, murderer, fraud, whatever they've done, don't persecute them - we serve them. Maybe, like Jean ValJean in Les Miserables, they learn their lesson, see Christ, and spend their lives serving others. But maybe we only set them free to recidivism, and maybe they go on to cheat and steal and rape other people - then we've not only failed to serve them, but we've failed to serve those around us whom they vicitmize next, and the authorities. Theoretically only God can know that answer. But that still leaves the quandary - what do we do?

It may be my non-confrontational attitude speaking, but I can't help but think that as Christians we should be leaning more towards forgiveness, especially when it comes to grievances against ourselves. Often this is characterized as being a "doormat", particularly when the victim themselves refuses to take action, a name that strips it of its dignity. But didn't Christ lay down His life for those who hated Him and even killed Him? Those who trespass against us become our adversaries - but aren't they the ones we are to love the most? And how are we to do so? Does Christ really mean to forgive - really? Even criminals?

The Sunday school answer seems obvious, but wrapped up in our judicial system and sense of "right and wrong", it's not. Even practically, we would cringe at the mere ideas of being wrongly fired, getting cheated out of insurance, or any other such thing without recompense.

So where do forgiveness and governmental justice intersect? And is that intersection that we see the one that God desires, or the one that we construct to be convenient in our lives?

petites choses

At the moment, just about every aspect of my life is up in the air. School, work, church, dancing, living place, how long and where for any of those. It's a little crazy, and things aren't progressing as well as I'd have liked, particularly with respect to grad school. It'd be great if you could pray for God's direction & encouragement in all of those things, because I look around and feel fairly helpless (not necessarily a bad thing, from God's point of view, I suppose).

But.

God's been giving me little things to make me smile. I suppose living by myself made me more willing to laugh out loud alone, because, well, no one's around, so what does it matter? It doesn't feel awkward anymore, and it's pretty cool. So, Thanksgiving's around the corner, maybe this is an early post, but things that have made me smile this week:

- I'm so excited that I get to hang out with my friends this week! On multiple days! You have no idea how happy this made me.

- the "Happy Song" was on the radio just now, and it makes me laugh because we often sang it at staff Fireside but never knew the complete lyrics so the verses were always rather garbled.

- Reading both "Leviathan" and "tohu bohu" in Les Mis made my day.

- I found cute shoes for dancing. Women's shoes. At the first store I looked for some. That's aboslutely unheard of - it usually takes upward of 2 years for me to find anything but athletic sneakers (easier because I can just buy guys' shoes for those).

- It's great to see fall again, and to smell it. I missed the smell of fall. Hopefuly I'll get to smell that lovely snow-eve smell soon!

- I can't even figure out what some of them are, there have just been moments of (solitary) laughter over the past few days that have made them bearable, and I'm thankful for those. Hopefully I'm not just going 100% off my rocker and becoming delusional.

the Mulberry Tree

Every year the first frost heralds the oncoming winter. The frost is late this year, and sudden after a very warm fall. Before today, many of the trees still retained their green leaves. As I look out at the woods and the mountain now, though, the foliage is decidedly yellow-orange and beginning to fall.

The first frost has always been a bit of a special event in our back yard. Twenty yards from our kitchen windows towers a male mulberry tree. He's tall and old, and his trunk is nearly 3 1/2 feet across. His branches are gnarled and arthritic, the lower branches overshadowed, dying, and occassionally snapping. The leaves are waxy and heavy - not as much as magnolia leaves, but far heavier than your average maple or elm.

The mulberry holds and hoards its leaves as long as it can, no matter how yellow they are. It clutches them tightly until the first frost, when it lets go and the leaves rain to the ground. Last night it had all of its leaves. As I looked out the window this morning, only half were left. Over the next hour, it lost another quarter. If it frosts again tomorrow, the mulberry will be left bare, its gnarled and naked fingers stretched out towards the sky while at its feet lies a thick carpet of leaves. Usually that carpet is a glorious yellow; our golden retriever used to stand out there and bark and bark as those yellow leaves fell all around him. This year fall has come late and caught the green leaves by surprise. Our backyard is now under a blanket of bright, bright green.

Maybe it seems silly to describe one tree's loss of leaves, but in our house, it's almost a tradition to wait for and watch the raining mulberry. I don't draw any allegories or life lessons from it; I just watch and enjoy. You would too if you could see it.